Actor, comedian and budding political commentator Russell Brand may have been surprised to hear that onetime Sex Pistol John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, is no fan of anarchism—or of Brand, for that matter.

As those weary of Occupy Wall Street’s insistence on direct democracy grow increasingly critical, Nathan Schneider with The Nation reminds us that it was anarchist principles that attracted and kept so many of its most devoted participants, and which point a way out of the contemporary party politics that have stifled so many voices.

In the park and other Occupied sites across the country, middle-class men and women, many highly educated but unschooled in the techniques of resistance, are taught by those who have been carrying out acts of rebellion for years.

While the world’s attention is focused on the uprisings in North Africa, West Africa’s Ivory Coast teeters on the brink of civil war in the wake of an election that saw outpolled President Laurent Gbagbo refuse to cede power.